A popular coal-miner’s riddle from the 1930s summarizes one of capitalism’s most visible and absurd contradictions. After a daughter asks her father why their home is so cold, he tells her they don’t have any money to purchase coal. He explains they don’t have money because he lost his job at the coal mine. When the daughter asks why he lost his job, the father answers: “Because we produced too much coal”. For a contemporary example, how many of us have, through a religious institution, school, ...
Jan 11, 2025•17 min
The eighth installment in Liberation School’s series of previously untranslated works by Thomas Sankara is published on the day Sankara was born in 1949. We would like to thank Bruno Jaffré and the editorial team of ThomasSankara.net for letting us translate and publish these works and the following interview dated September 20, 1985. The text is from an interview with Thomas Sankara conducted by a graduate student, which results in, as Jaffré notes in his introduction, a unique style of dialogu...
Sep 03, 2024•52 min
Every year, Pew Research publishes a study on the U.S. population’s political priorities. Their 2024 report shows that, like the previous years, “no single issue stands out after the economy,” with almost 75 percent of respondents rating it the main goal for the next administration, a rate “considerably larger” than any other policy. Yet when we see pundits discuss “the economy” on the news, they speak an obscuring language. The economy is an abstraction, in that there is no such “thing” as the ...
Jul 31, 2024•15 min
Hearing or reading about the “contradictions of capitalism” in an article or at a rally might be intimidating, like a foreign language or a term only a certain group can understand. While the contradictions of capitalism are complicated, working and oppressed people can easily understand them for the simple reason that we all live with and negotiate any number of contradictions every day. The contradictions we deal with that are the most confining, that most constrain our capacities and that kee...
Apr 12, 2024•20 min
According to the United Nations Population Fund’s 2009 report, 2008 was the first time in history that over 50 percent of the world’s population resided in cities instead of rural areas. Because of the different ways countries define cities, others date the qualitative shift to as recently as 2021. Regardless, across the spectrum it’s undisputed we now live in an “urban age” and, as such, transforming the relationship between cities and the natural world is essential for climate change adaptatio...
Dec 19, 2023•20 min
Note: Following the original publication of this article, Alex Saab was extradited to Miami on October 16th 2021, and remains in prison awaiting an appeal. On March 18, The Cape Verde Supreme Court approved the extradition of Venezuelan government envoy Alex Saab to the United States. Saab was en route to Iran to secure food and medicine deals for Venezuelan public programs last year when he was arrested in Cape Verde, at the request of the U.S. government under Donald Trump. He has been impriso...
Oct 18, 2023•9 min
Despite its association with sovereign nations involved in wartime alliances, the term “ally” has become influential in activist circles on the US left. Attention to debates over what it means to be an ally reveal the limits of the politics of allyship. They also provide an opportunity to reflect on the difference between allies and comrades. Allyship is anchored in liberal politics. People committed to revolutionary politics need to be comrades. Over the last decade, there have been intense dis...
Sep 16, 2023•27 min
Liu Liangmo’s story is as remarkable as it is unknown. An anti-imperialist, pro-Communist Christian, with a significant relationship to the Black Liberation Movement and the Indian Freedom Struggle, Liu lived in the U.S. as a diplomat after participating in the ongoing Chinese revolution. He wrote a column for the prominent Black newspaper. The Pittsburgh Courier, before returning to his home country and attaining a fairly high-ranking position there. His story offers notable insight into the hi...
Aug 26, 2023•25 min
Liu Liangmo (1909-1988) was a prominent Chinese anti-imperialist, religious leader and, from 1942-1945, columnist for the Pittsburgh Courier—at that time the nation’s widest circulating Black newspaper. Liu’s columns (and actions as an organizer) were a significant part of efforts by progressive Chinese people, on the mainland and in the diaspora, to build alliances with the Black Liberation movement as part of a broader effort to shape the post-war world. His words linked the causes of ending c...
Aug 22, 2023•30 min
In commemorating Black August, we commemorate the struggle of those who have fought before us and faced violent repercussions from the state. We uplift the revolutionary history of the Black working class and its fundamental position in forging and leading the struggle for liberation for all. And we recommit ourselves to the struggle for Black Liberation and for the freedom of all political prisoners. When I think of political prisoners, and when I think of those who have relentlessly committed ...
Aug 17, 2023•11 min
In early 1956, construction was almost complete on what the Japanese authorities and general public thought was going to be a battery factory in what is now known as West Tokyo, but what at the time was farmland. When the “factory” was finished on April 10 of that year, however, a banner outside the perimeters announced that it was the new home of Korea University, which was previously a series of shacks attached to Tokyo First Korean High School. This episode is part of the much longer and wide...
Jul 27, 2023•28 min
Our understanding of the state lies at the heart of our struggle to create a new society and fundamentally eliminate the oppression, exploitation, war, and environmental destruction characteristic of capitalism. In a socialist state, people collectively manage society, including what we produce, how much we produce, and the conditions of our work, to meet the needs of the people and the planet. Under capitalism, the state is organized to maintain the capitalist system and the dictatorship of a t...
Jul 16, 2023•34 min
The Cuban people voted by supermajority on Sept. 25 to approve the Families Code, a revolutionary law that modernizes, recognizes and legalizes all manifestations of families in Cuba. The previous 1975 Family Code was revolutionary for its time, but needed a major updating with almost 50 years of growth in social consciousness worldwide and in Cuba. The new Families Code broadens the family model to be fully inclusive. It includes the right to same sex marriage, expanded rights of adoption, allo...
Jun 24, 2023•13 min
How do the actual people in charge of corporations manage to remain protected from the consequences of the countless crimes they commit year after year? How is it that when CEOs make clear and obvious decisions that habitually violate every existing worker-won regulation, from the Clean Air Act to the Civil Rights Act, with very few exceptions, they charge the corporation—the “artificial” or “unnatural” person—instead of the CEO—the actual, “natural person” who made those decisions? The legal gr...
Jun 22, 2023•21 min
By the early 1970s, the global revolutionary tide of socialist and national liberation struggles was at its apex, and the tide was washing over the U.S., with expanding and increasingly militant social movements and political organizations. The beginning of “neoliberalism” was a domestic aspect of the coming global counterrevolution, which devastated the world for decades. This article tells the story of how the right wing of the capitalist class came to drive a new set of reactionary Supreme Co...
Jun 02, 2023•22 min
In an article published this year for International Women’s Day, Maddie Dery summarizes the various experiences of the women’s liberation movement since the early 20th century: “The history of International Women’s Day teaches us that when we fight, we win”. This spirit, which threads through the historic struggle for women’s liberation and socialism, is easily identified in the revolutionary origins, legacies, and futures of International Women’s Day. At Liberation School, we want to end March—...
May 15, 2023•53 min
Every working person is keenly aware that prices are up. Nasty surprises and disbelief keep turning up at the register. People are being forced to forgo even the most minor and seemingly harmless comfort purchases, adding to the accumulation of the indignities necessary for survival under capitalism. Even worse, the alleged culprits can seem abstract and hard to pin down, like “the supply chain.” Some try to blame good things like higher wages, and others point to enraging levels of straight-up ...
Apr 14, 2023•28 min
In a recent book on the ongoing relevance of Walter Rodney’s work, Karim F. Hirji notes that, “as with scores of progressive intellectuals and activists of the past, the prevailing ideology functions to relegate Rodney into the deepest, almost unreachable, ravines of memory. A person who was widely known is now a nonentity, a stranger to the youth in Africa and the Caribbean” and the U.S. Rodney’s theoretical and practical contributions to the socialist movement warrant an ongoing engagement wit...
Apr 03, 2023•26 min
The Party for Socialism and Liberation is built on two essential premises. One is revolutionary Marxist theory and analysis on all issues affecting humanity and the environment we live in, especially the most pressing issues facing workers and oppressed peoples. We strive through our literature, newspaper, social media, video, agitational leaflets, and more, to popularize and communicate to our class the truth behind the capitalists’ lies and the urgent need for socialism. But theory and politic...
Feb 23, 2023•10 min
We are in a period where the world’s poor and working people are waging heroic struggles against imperialist war and exploitation. Millions of people poured into the streets in the last few years to prevent Bush and Cheney’s rush to war against Iraq, only to find that this imperialist war had the backing of both political parties of U.S. imperialism, of the big business media, of the corporations and the banks. The protests were huge—the biggest anti-war demonstrations ever. The anti-war movemen...
Feb 21, 2023•17 min
In 2013, five unelected judges gutted the right to vote for tens of millions of African Americans and others. The Supreme Court’s ruling in Shelby v. Holder overturned a key provision of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 (VRA) that prevented voter suppression. That provision—outlined in Section 4(b) of the Act—required state and local governments with a documented history of racism to submit any changes to their electoral laws for pre-approval by a federal agency. A single court case, heard in in a ...
Feb 08, 2023•25 min
Tyre Nichols, a 29-year-old Black man, was mercilessly beaten to death earlier this month during a traffic stop by five Memphis Police Department officers. In a few hours, the video of his murder will be released to the public. Righteous outrage is already boiling across the country, and the Party for Socialism and Liberation will be joining thousands in the streets tonight to demand justice. Only mass action can revive the movement against police terror, and to end that terror ultimately requir...
Jan 29, 2023•8 min
Contrary to the mythology we learn in school, the founding fathers feared and hated the concept of democracy—which they derisively referred to as “tyranny of the majority.” The constitution that they wrote reflects this, and seeks to restrict and prohibit involvement of the masses of people in key areas of decision making. The following article, originally written in 2008, reviews the true history of the constitution and its role in the political life of the country. The ruling class of today—th...
Jan 05, 2023•20 min
Since the fall of the Soviet Union, the U.S. and other imperialist countries have repeatedly declared that history is over, meaning that humanity cannot transcend the capitalist system, which is elevated as the pinnacle of human development. As Margaret Thatcher claimed “there is no alternative” to capitalism, and the best we can hope for is a kinder, gentler, and more “humane” form of it. According to the capitalist class, the fall of the Soviet Union demonstrated that “socialism doesn’t work” ...
Dec 12, 2022•25 min
The corporate media is on a nonstop campaign asserting that the U.S. electorate is turning to the right and rejecting progressive policies. It is clear that if Republicans win back either the House or Senate, this message will be amplified a thousand times over. But this narrative is completely fraudulent. In the working class especially, there is a widespread rejection of corporate power, an embrace of core progressive policies and a desire to fight. Whether or not that sentiment is fully refle...
Oct 30, 2022•18 min
In the preface to the first edition of volume one of Capital, dated July 25, 1867, Marx introduces the book’s “ultimate aim”: “to lay bare the economic law of motion of modern society”. Looking back 155 years later, it’s clear the book not only accomplished that aim but continues to do so today. In a few short pages, Marx introduces the method he used to study and present his research into the dynamics of capitalism, explains the reasons why he focused on England, distinguishes between modes of ...
Sep 24, 2022•14 min
The following interview, facilitated by Derek Ford, took place via e-mail during June and July in preparation for Black August, when progressive organizers and activists deepen our study of and commitment to the Black struggle in the U.S. and the anti-colonial and anti-imperialist class struggles worldwide. During this time, we wanted to provide a unique and accessible resource on Walter Rodney, the revolutionary Guyanese organizer, theorist, pedagogue, political economist, and what many call a ...
Aug 31, 2022•28 min
This is the first English translation of this interview and the opening installment in a Liberation School series of previously untranslated work by Thomas Sankara. This translation series is the result of a collaboration with ThomasSankara.net, an online platform dedicated to archiving work on and by the great African revolutionary. We would like to express our gratitude to Bruno Jaffré for allowing us to establish this collaboration and providing us with the right to translate this material in...
Aug 20, 2022•14 min
During the summer of 2020, tens of millions of people took to the streets to participate in the largest uprising in this country’s history. From the smallest towns to the biggest cities, working people across races, genders and ages joined together to demand justice for all victims of police terror. The national spotlight was primarily on Black victims of police terror like George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Tony McDade and many more. But the righteous anger did not only stem from Black people. The r...
Aug 02, 2022•12 min
Cities across the U.S. are rapidly transforming. “Gentrification-style” luxury developments are replacing neighborhood landmarks and low-income housing. Sky-high rents are pushing poor residents increasingly further from city centers. These trends are symptoms of gentrification, the process by which poor and working-class people are driven out of their communities due to an influx of capitalist investment in their neighborhoods. Gentrification is not always defined in these terms. Some cite cult...
Jul 02, 2022•26 min
